


Holy Thrones, Holy Histories

by summerwines



Category: Gravity Falls, ParaNorman (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:15:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerwines/pseuds/summerwines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The very short story of the princess and the prince who held the absolute power to bring the cosmos to its cinders</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holy Thrones, Holy Histories

**Author's Note:**

> [Written for Parapines Week: Day 7 - AU]  
> A SpaceRoyalty!AU for Parapines! I feel like my whole life was just leading up to me writing this (Lol, no. I kid.). I initially thought of doing a Modern Royalty AU, but then that didn’t work out. I thought, then, of just doing something set in space. And then, uh, idea bulb, I managed to put the two premises together.

** 001\. Her name was Mabel. **

She treads on crystal and steel and carpets made of particles newly discovered. She stands in front of her court wearing the long red gown tailored just for her. She has her hands together, clasped and positioned near her stomach. Her face is bleached, and her lips are lined with a bright shade of pink.

The space shines with bright white, with its marble walls and Grecian columns that reminisce aesthetics from more than a billion years ago.

She had walked through this court and now she’s at the forefront, acknowledging all her subjects in attendance. They all bow down before her, the men and the women in their white uniforms and their bronze badges of honor clipped to their right breasts.

Her favorites are kept at both her sides: her ladies in waiting, Grenda and Candy – one a plump little woman wearing a turquoise dress, the other wearing tight olive green over her thin and petite figure. She is taken by them to sit on her throne made of stainless silver metal. They take her hands and assist her. Her general, the stout man she calls Neil carries her white diamond tiara on a blue pillow with silver linings.

The crown is placed on her head. She stares straight, and her mouth quirks. Her general recites the rite of passage, and all the officials rise and they bow only their heads in solemn prayer.

She smiles because she is now queen of this floating city in the heart of a galaxy light years away from the original habitation.

She smiles because this is only the beginning.

When the night comes, she shares her happiness with her dearest friends.

They dance at the hall lit by the stars and the unnamed planets. They dance under a glass dome and over clear crystal. Their feet tap and stomp and revel at the beat of electric violins. Everyone wants to dance with her, and she dances with anyone who asks. She alternates with her ladies, tells the men to give her beautiful girls the time of their lives.

Fireworks begin at midnight. It booms over them, the neon and the yellow. She stands at the center of her subjects, of all the people dressed in white. She giggles wildly, holding on to the hands of her dear general. She kisses his cheek and tells him this is the most wonderful day of her life. He tells her that indeed it should be, but there are better days that are coming.

They gamble till they feel their fortune is at its limit. She wins again and again and again. She lets the others win only a few times. She plays with the holographic cards, bets on all the cupcakes in the pantry, and never has to give anything up. The people around her are kissing and laughing in this private chamber sealed in darkness, but adorned with chandeliers designed by the greatest artists in all the universe. Everyone in her court is engrossed in love and triumph and new beginnings.

But, ah, festivities must always come to an end.

The Lady Courtney, a friend from childhood, assists her in her chamber once everything is over. She helps her get out of her gown and get into her periwinkle nightdress.

“This really is the happiest I’ve seen you, my queen,” Courtney tells her, before she leaves the room.

“Don’t call me queen, Courtney,” she says. “We’ve known each other for so long. My being queen doesn’t change that. You can call me by my name.”

Courtney visibly smiles to what is said.

“Should I close the curtains?” Courtney says, as she turns to look at the tall window overlooking the city and its tall towers made of steel.

“No need,” the queen says, and she sits on her bed covered in white and gold stripes. By how she sits, she shows she has no qualms with gracelessness. “I feel like talking to the stars today.”

“Of course,” Courtney says.

“I wanna gloat,” the queen continues. “To those boys up there, who think they can just leave and not lose anything of value.”

Courtney halts. “Yes.” She knows what the queen talks about. She knows exactly who is up there, with the stars in the sky.

The princess is now the queen and the princess is anything but a melancholic beauty. When she is left alone, she stands by her window and looks at the kingdom that was built by her family. She watches all the white ships that hover through the air, the ones that belong to the officials. She watches the city’s bright lights flickering in her eyes. She looks far up to the sky, smiles, thinks that her brother should never have refused to devour the command she has taken now as her own.

In the pocket of her nightdress, she keeps a necklace, one that she used to wear night after night for good luck. She holds onto it for hope. She holds onto it because it represents all the dreams that she’s had to let go. She wonders, briefly, if Courtney has a necklace that bears the same shape: a star with curved lines. She knows, definitely, that her brother and the knight have the exact same ones.

She remembers how she got it, from the older generation. They were all given it; they were all told to hang onto it because it traps their dreams, makes them stagnant until a certain point in one’s life.

She holds it in her hands and she breaks it in half.

She no longer has dreams; she only has decrees and commitments.

This is but the beginning. This is her age. Her years, she knows, will be full of light and glory. It will be that, indeed, and so much more.

There will be love and victory as along as she sits on her throne. She will decree that as long as she reigns, everyone will live in frolics and fairytales. This is how she has designed it, and this is how it shall elapse.

+

 

**002\. His name was Dipper.**

He treads on fire and ice and the bones of dead men. He still wears the royal clothing of his kingdom – white garments with golden cuffs and blue buttons. The others do not have gold and do not have blue, only white. Only the crown prince and princess are adorned with such tints. 

He’s memorized it, every single thing about the nobility in the kingdom. These are things, however, that he tries to forget. He finds that he does forget them, bit by bit, for every cruel man he has killed. He forgets a piece of his old life for the sake of this new one that is tainted by the gun he wields at his belt. 

He flies but a small ship, a brown, beaten-up model that he stole from a commoner. He flies it through the webs of stars and through the flares of comets along with his knight, his favorite knight, the one called Norman. 

The prince is in white and his knight is in black. They scream together every time they soar through and rush into great beams of light. They hold each other’s hands when they feel like it could be their last time moving through space. The prince is thankful for the knight’s company, for the knight’s devotion. He has told him time and again that it need not be given, this undying love, but Norman dismisses and insists. 

They fly together into the mouths of galaxies. They fly without grace into new terrains, into places they have no knowledge of. 

They fight cruel men to keep their sense of justice. 

In a planet they go to, far away from any other, they find this weather-beaten town with people who show no signs of inhospitality. In their saloons and in their inns made of cheap wood, the prince and his knight are welcomed with open arms. 

They meet a girl with red hair and a hardened attitude in one of the places where people go to drink and to sing with their friends and their families. The girl tells them a story, of these men who come into town and steal from their homes. They kill one man every week, with their guns that shoot yellow bullets of light. It was the week before this when they killed Old Man Corduroy, her dear old father. And this time, she fears her neighbors might be next. 

He and his knight have their guns in their belts; they ready themselves to face the ones these people call monsters without hearts. 

Norman always knows when their enemies approach. He can tell when impure intentions are within arm’s reach. 

They try to settle things with words. They try for negotiation, but it’s evident to the men that “this town isn’t big enough for all of us.” And they attempt to shoot the prince right at his heart. Before that, however, the man who targets is killed by Norman. 

And it ends like that, with the blood of cruel men at their feet. 

That is the song they live by. When they depart for other planets and other stars, they leave their marks; they impose their acts of nobility. 

He makes sure they forget nothing. He makes sure that the things they do will not only be events that come to pass. They will be told in history. 

He writes everything down, in a thick brown journal that’s leather-bound and locked with cooper. It’s a journal that’s been passed down to him. It, like the necklace he wears on his neck, has the mark of the star without straight lines – the star of the wayward souls, of lost dreams, and of possible histories. Of all the paradoxes that could exist in the universe. 

He writes and he writes, and he makes sure the details are vivid and compelling. 

He writes while they lie in the small chamber in the ship that they fashioned into a bedroom. He writes while Norman sleeps with his nose burrowed on the prince’s shoulder. 

Sometimes he lies awake at night, naked and bruised, thinking of the things he might be able to do on the days to come. He also thinks of the things he might have done, if things were different. He thinks of his sister and the crown that’s been betrothed to her. She must be doing amazing, he thinks. 

His knight always catches him awake. He gets a berating, which is not at all appreciated, because he’s a prince and he should be able to do what he wants. 

He doesn’t say that, though. He resents that he even thinks of the words. 

The kingship has been given up. The kingdom has been accounted for. It already belongs to his twin sister. The name ‘prince’ cannot even be something he can claim to have. 

But he sticks with the name. He sticks with it because he still has someone who calls him it. 

“You’re my prince,” he always says, usually while they’re in bed, though sometimes while in the afterglow of battle. “And I’ll always be beside you until I fall to the ground." 

“What if I’m the one who falls to the ground first?" 

“Well,” the knight says, and if they were in bed, he’d be putting his lips just an inch away from the prince’s ear and he’d put a hand atop of the prince’s chest. He continues to whisper that, “I will look for your ghost. I will look for it and I will stay with it until I myself can join it.” 

“No. Not a chance. You won’t be doing that, Norman. You won’t." 

He says that all the time, but Norman never comments. He stays as devoted as ever. 

Back in the kingdom of his forefathers, they would call his knight the freak and the blasphemer. Though that was a sentiment never shared by the royals. He’d been given the star, after all. He’d been handed the emblem of nobility despite the condition of his eyes and his spirit. 

This is something the prince has written on the first few pages of his journal of histories. He includes his knight, and he mentions his name – Norman Babcock of the royal house. The both of them will be written in history as men who strived to pave their own ways through the fire and ice that makes up the universe. Their names will be written down, orated, by all they have saved. 

He has made sure of it, that their names would live forever and that their love for fire and ice and each other lives on until all that is left of the universe are ashes, wayward stars that burned against the darkness of each and every sky. 

**fin.**


End file.
